A fourth emerging theme I present in this paper is my identification of what I am calling “leadership straddler’s.” I use a study by Prudence Carter (2006) that desired to challenge the findings by Fordham and Ogbu’s (1986) proposed “acting white” theory by black students in regards to educational performance in schools to inform my idea. Carter focused on how both black and Latino low-socioeconomic (SES) students navigate performance in the classroom juxtapose with peer group interaction. She identified three type of ideological perspective carried out by the youth in her study: (1) the cultural mainstreamers, the noncompliant believers, and the cultural straddlers. For the purpose of my work I focus on Carter’s identification of “cultural straddlers.” According to Carter, cultural staddlers “are obviously navigators, ranging from students who ‘play the game’ and embrace the cultural codes of both school and home community to those who vocally criticize the schools’ ideology while still achieving well academically” (p. 308).
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He first begins to reveal himself as a stradler through his retelling of his experience as a teacher. His teaching experience began at an alternative high school in the urban Riverdale Public School (RPS). When asked to describe a story from his experience teaching science, Richardson begins,
It’s funny, I remember talking about external and internal fertilization. And these kids were looking at me like I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. And then I actually started using some verbiage . . . some verbiage that probably most schools would say you can’t talk like that. But they got it!
Here, Richardson transverse his own white privilege to responsively communicate with his black students. Next he describes, how he got a teaching job at a suburban school district but did not finish the year and return to work at an urban
He first begins to reveal himself as a stradler through his retelling of his experience as a teacher. His teaching experience began at an alternative high school in the urban Riverdale Public School (RPS). When asked to describe a story from his experience teaching science, Richardson begins,
It’s funny, I remember talking about external and internal fertilization. And these kids were looking at me like I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. And then I actually started using some verbiage . . . some verbiage that probably most schools would say you can’t talk like that. But they got it!
Here, Richardson transverse his own white privilege to responsively communicate with his black students. Next he describes, how he got a teaching job at a suburban school district but did not finish the year and return to work at an urban